Lawrence H. White: The Clash of Economic Ideas: The Great Policy Debates and Experiments of the Last Hundred Years (2012)
Filed under book | Tags: · business, economics, economy, history, liberalism, market, money, production
The Clash of Economic Ideas interweaves the economic history of the last hundred years with the history of economic doctrines to understand how contrasting economic ideas have originated and developed over time to take their present forms. It traces the connections running from historical events to debates among economists, and from the ideas of academic writers to major experiments in economic policy. The treatment offers fresh perspectives on laissez faire, socialism and fascism; the Roaring Twenties, business cycle theories and the Great Depression; Institutionalism and the New Deal; the Keynesian Revolution; and war, nationalization and central planning. After 1945, the work explores the postwar revival of invisible-hand ideas; economic development and growth, with special attention to contrasting policies and thought in Germany and India; the gold standard, the interwar gold-exchange standard, the postwar Bretton Woods system and the Great Inflation; public goods and public choice; free trade versus protectionism; and finally fiscal policy and public debt.
Publisher Cambridge University Press, 2012
ISBN 1107012422, 9781107012424
440 pages
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Jacques Ellul: The Technological Society (1954/1964)
Filed under book | Tags: · bourgeoisie, critique of technology, economy, fascism, machine, politics, production, propaganda, technique, technological society, technology, totalitarianism
As insightful and wise today as it was when originally published in 1954, Jacques Ellul’s The Technological Society has become a classic in its field, laying the groundwork for all other studies of technology and society that have followed. Ellul offers a penetrating analysis of our technological civilization, showing how technology–which began innocuously enough as a servant of humankind–threatens to overthrow humanity itself in its ongoing creation of an environment that meets its own ends. No conversation about the dangers of technology and its unavoidable effects on society can begin without a careful reading of this book.
Originally published in French as La technique ou l’enjeu du siècle by Librairie Armand Colin, 1954.
Translated by John Wilkinson
With an introduction by Robert K. Merton
Publisher Vintage Books, a divisio of Random House, New York, 1964
449 pages
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Fredy Perlman: The Reproduction of Daily Life (1969-) [EN, CR, PT, FR]
Filed under book | Tags: · alienation, capitalism, economy, everyday, labour, life, production, reproduction, society, value
What sustains Capitalism? Our acceptance of everyday activities. The text offers a clear introduction to basic Marxist concepts like commodity fetishism, and surplus value; it also traces the transformation of human activity into capital. It opens with the observation “that everyday practical activity of tribesmen reproduces, or perpetuates, a tribe.”
Publisher: Black & Red, Detroit, 1969, 24 pages. Reprinted in Anything Can Happen, October 1992, Phoenix Press, PO Box 824 London N1 9DL.
Croatian edition: Reprodukcija svakodnevnog života. Translated by Aleksa Golijanin, 2003. Anti-copyright.
Portuguese edition: A Reprodução do Quotidiano. Translated from Treason Press edition (2004), in February 2009, Edições Versus Capitalismus. Anti-copyright.
French edition: La Reproduction de la Vie Quotidienne. Published by Ravage Éditions, Paris, September 2011. Anti-copyright.
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